The Diary

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 57579

Heidi Tandy states:

> But if he's telling them the truth, then he doesn't know enough to have told 
> Dobby to go to Harry.
> 
He doesn't know enough to tell Dobby to go to Harry and tell him about the 
plot. True. He doesn't know about the plot because I can't see Lucius taking 
a whiney 12-year-old into his confidence on a matter as critical as the 
Riddle diary campaign.

However, I think there was a whole net of tangled motives and confilcting 
adgendas going on at the beginning of CoS. I wrote my own take on this up and 
posted it on the Red Hen site, but it's too long to go into the whole thing 
here. But this is my take on the set up at the opening of the book.

The way I see it. Dobby is of the "Harry Potter is the saviour of the 
wizarding world" persuasion regardless of who he works for. He really did 
want to keep Harry safe -- but he as NO authority to approach him without his 
family's permission.

Lucius has authority to burn, but he is spearheading the plot and the last 
thing he wants if for Potter to get wind of it.

Draco knows zippo about his father's plot, but, as the "young master' has the 
authority to give Dobby orders.

Okay, that's how things stand at the opening of CoS. Now, Fred and George 
guess as soon as they hear about Dobby's visit that he was sent to keep Harry 
away from Hogwarts. Probably by someone like Draco Malfoy. And that 
explanation at the end of the book where Dobby--who originally told Harry 
that the plot did NOT have anything to do with You-Know-Who-- weasels around 
it by claiming that before TMR became You-Know-Who, he could be named freely, 
is a strong confirmation to the suspicion that Dobby is a very 
"Slytherin-minded" elf, even if he does not support the Dark Lord.

So we now have Draco, freshly home from school, pouting, whining, sulking and 
generally throwing tantrums over Harry bloody Potter and his friends and 
their house points which did Slytherin out of the Cup. And we have Dobby who 
knows about a plot and is desperately seeking an excuse to go and warn Harry 
Potter about it. I really don't think it would have been all that difficult 
for Dobby to plant the idea in Draco's mind to order Dobby to try to keep 
Potter from returning to Hogwarts. By whatever means seemed good to him.

It does not explain Dobby managing to hang around Hogwarts off and on through 
the school year and play around with the bludgers, but Lucius may have been 
away from home that week which let Dobby sneak out to the school.

-JOdel


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